Side Story 02 – Daleks – Invasion Earth 2150 A.D.

So here we are, the second, and final, Peter Cushing Dr. Who movie. It’s got most of the same problems as the first one, and very few good things. But, hey, we’re here, so let’s roll with it.

Doesn’t that just scream quality?

As before, we have Peter Cushing in the role of Dr. Who, human inventor of a space-time machine called TARDIS. Roberta Tovey is back as his granddaughter, Susan. We also have Louise, Dr. Who’s niece, and then rounding out the cast we have…can you believe it? Wilff! Donna’s grandfather! Yes, Bernard Cribbins puts in his first appearance in the Doctor Who universe, and I couldn’t be happier.

Hooray!

Here he plays a police officer, who gets attacked by a thug that’s involved in a jewelry story heist. He goes chasing after the robbers and finds a police box. He stumbles inside, and our adventure begins, and I’m reminded that I’d give real money if Wilff came back to the series and made aa casual comment about his time working as a police officer.

There are some other changes between this movie and the prior one. First off, the TARDIS interior looks more finished, which is actually kind of reasonable. One would think Dr. Who would spend a lot of time working on it.

This particular movie is also based on a TV story. In this case, it’s based off “The Dalek Invasion of Earth”, though we can assume it doesn’t end with Dr. Who’s ten-year-old granddaughter staying behind to marry the man she loves.

Another improvement over this against the first movie is that this one is much more dynamically directed. The action scenes especially work better. It’s the same director for both movies, so I’ll just assume he got better, which is nice to see!

This is a flawed movie, very much as the first one was. The action scenes are well-staged, but everything else is kind of meh. There’s a comedy piece in the middle that stops the story cold, and it has a tough time restarting after that, though by the end, it almost manages it. Also, there’s no real wheelchair chase, so that kind of sucks.

Ultimately, this is another film I can recommend only to the die-hard Who fans. It just isn’t very good, though again, like the first one, it isn’t that bad, either.

This was the last of the Cushing films, though it wasn’t originally planned that way. Back in the day, when they made this, they had planned to follow-up with a film adaptation of “The Chase”. That never happened, but one intrepid YouTuber gives us a glimpse of what might have been.